I looked through the curtain at Maya.
“I don’t know,” I said.
For the second time that night, the truth sounded unbearable.
Maya answered the question herself after they moved us into a private room.
“No one locked me in,” she said.
She lay propped against white pillows, an IV line in her arm. Some color had returned to her face, though she still looked painfully small beneath the hospital blanket.
“I could have called someone,” she continued. “I could have called an ambulance.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Her eyes shifted toward the bassinet beside my chair.
“Because your mother said if I embarrassed the family, she would tell you I wasn’t capable of taking care of Liam.”
I stared at her.
“She said what?”
Maya’s voice grew quieter.
“She said you were already under pressure at work, and that if I called you home, you might lose the German contract. She told me you had warned her I could be emotional after the surgery.”
